


Children of the Lamp: The Heir of Alexander

by Lucinda_MH_Cheshir



Series: Holly and Cas's Vaguely Titled Djinn Adventures [2]
Category: Children of the Lamp - P. B. Kerr
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 09:58:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9814391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucinda_MH_Cheshir/pseuds/Lucinda_MH_Cheshir
Summary: Holly and Cas are back, and so is Azazel, and as per usual he’s causing trouble. What do some ancient, glowing hieroglyphs, a curse older than the common era, and a desert-dwelling descendant have in common? Holly and Cas scramble to throw a wrench in Azazel’s mysterious plans (not to mention find out what they are to begin with,) with the help of Nimrod, Gabriel, and Mark.This was first posted on ff.n, but I think after letting it sit for four years, it's about time for a major overhaul.





	1. Prologue: A Glyptic Clue

**Author's Note:**

> Yes this is a repost from ff.n but I've decided that I've nothing better to do with my time than revise this thing so it's more consistent with the rest of my writing. The revised edition will be going up on ff.n eventually, too.  
> <3<3<3  
> ~Lucinda

**Prologue: A Glyptic Clue**

_ Alexandria, Egypt _

Ian Peters, a young American graduate student, considered himself very lucky to be staying in Alexandria for his vacation. Well, it was, in his opinion, going to end up being more of a working vacation.

He had come to Alexandria, the Pearl of the Mediterranean, for the first time that winter in hopes of learning more about his area of expertise, hyperfocusing on Alexander the Great. Possibly, Ian hoped, he might discover something that no one else had ever found. That would really kickstart his career. It was ambitious of Ian, but for now he would settle simply for studying Alexander, and Alexandria. True, it was a little strange that the department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at his home university, all the way back in frigid Pennsylvania, had suddenly received a windfall of an anonymous donation, and requested in return a research team in Alexandria for a month or two. Ian was only too happy to accept his professor’s invitation.

The Great Library of old was now in ruins, as was the Great Lighthouse, but Ian visited the sites of the buildings anyway, hoping against hope that he might receive some clue to an unsolved mystery, like the novels Ian read in his free time. The other graduate students on the research team joined him, jet-lagged but similarly enthusiastic to be in Egypt, but as the day wore on, one by one they began to peel away from the group, returning to the hotel, or stopping for food, or sometimes getting distracted in the street markets.

The sun was just setting over the horizon when Ian came to the very oldest part of the city, now on his own, his zeal to explore pushing him though his body cried out from exhaustion. He almost tripped over a stone that was jutting out strangely from the ancient road, and would have simply continued, if he hadn’t noticed some odd, shining red hieroglyphics near the bottom of a half-ruined, mud brick wall. Intrigued, Ian fell to one knee for a closer look. Immediately, he recognized the hieroglyphs for “Alexander,” and took out his pocket notebook to copy down the strange, almost magical writing.

He would translate the glyphs the first opportunity tomorrow, Ian decided, trying unsuccessfully to stifle a yawn. The hotel and his fellow research students were waiting for him.

“I wondered how long it would take you to find it,” came a harsh, English-accented voice from directly behind Ian. Ian rose and turned quickly to see who had observed his marvelous find, and was met with the sight of a teenage boy with cold green eyes, and an older-looking woman whose dark eyes glittered with absolute malice. The boy wore a black suit, apparently made of wool, despite the blazing desert sun that continued to sink below the horizon, and blond hair spilled from under an equally thick woolen Donegal cap that shaded his face, making his green eyes appear to glow almost like a cat’s in the dying light.  “Looks like the money we put into that stupid university wasn’t a complete waste after all, mother.” He remarked, a sinister smirk playing across his dark face.

“I haven’t been so pleased since I heard that my fool brother Iblis had been dismembered by tigers.” the woman, who, much like the teenager, was dressed in a black woolen suit, though she wore a skirt and high heels, and her neatly piled blonde hair was topped by a much black straw boater hat, looking down her somewhat snubbed nose as she smiled with quiet malice at Ian, and the boy nodded in agreement.

“Indeed. Now, Mr. Peters, isn’t it? It’d save me quite a bit of unnecessary trouble if you just gave me those glyphs that you copied down, but I doubt that you’ll just give over like that. You academic types never work like that, do you? You always have to protect your  _ precious research _ .” The teenager snorted derisively.

Ian had no idea who these two English folks thought they were, but the shining red hieroglyphics were Ian’s find, and there was absolutely no way that he’d let his notebook out his sight. Beyond the simple principle of the thing, Ian had a strange feeling that whatever the hieroglyphics were, they were too important to be given up easily.

“Leave me alone!” Ian shouted, hoping that a police officer would perhaps hear him, or failing that, one of his peers who had come to look for him. but this hope was in vain. The boy rolled his eyes and sighed, seeming exasperated, but not the least bit surprised. Ian backed away, until, with horror, he found that he had backed into the mud-brick wall.

“Mother? If you would be so kind as to, ah,  _ persuade _ Mr. Peters? Yes, thank you.”

The boy’s mother nodded and, in less time than it took for him to blink, she was holding a very sharp, black-bladed knife against Ian’s throat.

“Okay, okay! Take it!” Ian whispered, deciding that his precious notes were not as important as his life, and threw the little book down onto the dusty path at the boy’s feet.

“Thank you, Mr. Peters.” The boy smiled sinisterly, eyes glinting with wicked triumph, and the woman retreated, sheathing her knife.

“Now then,” she said, turning to her son with an air of business, “I think a Methuselah would be adequate, don’t you, son?”

The boy nodded, and stooped to collect Ian’s notebook from the dusty brick road.

“Yes, mother. That’s a very good idea. I’ve not done one of those in ages.” And, pausing to grin horribly at Ian, the boy finished with a single, rather strange word. “MUMPSIMUS,” he said, and Ian began to run.

* * *

 


	2. Waking Reflections

**Chapter 1: Waking Reflections**

Holly Godwin awoke in a cold sweat. She had no doubt that the string of seemingly random images was a message intended for her. Holly was both a djinn and a prophet, and this combination of talents made some other djinn in London hesitant to talk to her, for fear that Holly might have seen the skeletons that they kept in their closets. Of course, the visions and prophesies that Holly received were nothing so trivial.

Not that they made sense most of the time.

And not that anyone her age seemed to care find this out.

Holly blinked a couple more times and sat up, yawning and stretching. Then, still feeling tired, she fell back on her pillows and stared at the mural that had been painted on her ceiling.

As she stared at the painted starry sky, a scene that was so realistic that Holly felt as though it were still around midnight, despite the pale morning light sneaking its way past the edges of her curtains, she reflected on the adventure she’d had last summer. Holly dearly wanted to go on another adventure, but with her djinn father, Nimrod, being so insistent about giving Holly and her best friend, Cas Malone, a good education, they had all remained in London since September. Holly had lost count of the number of books she’d read, mostly on Nimrod’s pushing, but Cas kept a careful list, which was now about 1,153 books long. Nothing stopped Cas from reading when he could.

Holly’s mind wandered from Cas to Cas’s evil elder brother, Azazel Teer. Azazel had tried to incinerate all of Europe last Summer, and it was only because of Holly calling upon Jibril the archangel that the millions of people who lived on the European continent were still alive. Holly wondered why she’d had a vision of Azazel, what it all meant. Was Azazel hatching a new plan? Had he already hatched a new plan, and was now implementing it? Holly couldn’t say.

Her thoughts were interrupted by her older brother Mark, hammering loudly on her door. “Time to get up, kiddo!” he shouted at her. Holly groaned. Mark was her brother, and she loved him, but sometimes it seemed as though he could be the most annoying person on Earth.  _ Especially _ when he got up early.

“Yeah, I’m coming.” She mumbled in reply. For all of her deep thinking, Holly was still very tired.

“I’m sure you are, Holly. Don’t forget to wear your hijab!” Holly groaned again. Mark was getting more and more insistent about Holly ‘conforming to the Muslim dress code,’ as he put it. Before they had come to live with Nimrod in London, Mark had rarely insisted that Holly do anything, indeed, she might have almost called him ‘fun,’ but now he was more bossy than ever. It seemed, to Holly, that her brother was being entirely too protective of her. It may have been that Mark had been rattled by the danger Holly had been placed in last summer, but all the same, Holly hadn’t given up fighting Mark’s edict.

After she heard Mark make his way, noisily, down the old wooden staircase down the hall, Holly got dressed, as she usually did, very purposefully leaving her favourite red paisley print hijab draped across the back of a chair, but pulling on a heavy long-sleeved sweater so large that she could almost disappear into it if she got too cold. She put on her thick gold earrings, the ones that actually fit under her hijab without making an awkward lump, and ran her fingers through her hair. It had grown a few inches since summer, and was getting unattractively scraggly. This was mostly because she hadn’t been to a hairdresser in months, and since Mark always wanted her to wear the hijab, he never mentioned it. Sighing, Holly brushed her hair, tied it into a curly mess of a ponytail, left the brush carelessly on top of her bureau, (something which Nimrod had tried to explain to her that djinn should  _ never ever do _ ) and wandered downstairs to the kitchen where Mark and Mr. Groanin, Nimrod’s butler, were already busy cooking breakfast.

“What are you making?” Holly asked, trying to look past her brother at whatever was in the frying pan. Mark turned around, and cursed something in Arabic, probably the only curse he knew. As if by instinct, his hand shot out to prevent Mr. Groanin from turning around. Holly could practically sense the butler rolling his eyes as he muttered

“ _ Here we go again, by heck. _ ”

“Didn’t I tell you to wear your hijab? Didn’t we have an agreement? You wear it until you’re eighteen and then I won’t bother you about it ever again. Why is that so hard for you to remember?” Mark asked Holly crossly. “Now go back upstairs and put one of them on, or I promise you, you’re not getting fed!”

“ _ Every bleeding day... _ ” Groanin muttered.

Holly rolled her eyes. “We have this argument every morning, brother mine. I don’t see the point of it anymore! Isn’t wearing the hijab supposed to be  _ my choice _ ?”

“Yeah, neither do I. Especially since I always win  _ because we had an agreement _ . You’re fifteen years old, and according to the legal system in many countries, you don’t get to make choices yet. Now, upstairs, and when you come back down, you need to have your hijab on. Go on, scram!” Mark brandished a steel spatula at her, and Holly rolled her eyes again, but went back upstairs to do as he bade her to.

On the stairs, Holly almost ran into Nimrod.

“Good morning, my child,”  Nimrod greeted Holly with a smile. Then he noticed her less-than-pleased demeanor. “I take it that Mark is threatening to starve you again, is he?”

Holly nodded darkly. “He’s just lucky that it’s winter. If he tries to make me wear that thing in the summertime...” Holly didn’t finish her thought, but sighed, and gave her father a good-morning hug. “I can’t do anything about it now, though. So I guess I ought to do as he says until I can make him change his mind. I don’t know what his deal is, though! It’s just irritating! So what if I don’t wear my hijab sometimes? There are days when I want to show how cute my hair looks!” She tugged irritably on the end of her ponytail for emphasis.

Nimrod patted her consolingly on the back. “You’re growing up, Holly. Mark just wants what’s best for you. You’re really all that he’s got to hold on to now. My advice is to humour him.”

Holly heaved a sigh. “I guess you’re right about that, Nimrod. Anyway, have you seen Cas? Or is he oversleeping again?” Nimrod shrugged, and allowed Holly to continue up the stairs and to her room.

Smoothing her hair out and putting on the hijab was a matter of a paltry couple of minutes, and on her way back down to breakfast, Holly banged loudly on her best friend’s bedroom door.

“Wake up, Cas!” she shouted, and a replying grunt came from the other side. “We’re not going to wait on you again, y’know!”

“Yeah, I know. Just a minute.” Cas was as good as his word, and about a minute later, he appeared at his door, looking disheveled, dark circles underneath his eyes, his hair a riotous mess, and otherwise exhausted. As was usual.

“You were up reading again, weren’t you?” Holly smiled. Cas yawned and nodded, straightening his t-shirt and trying to rub the sleep from his eyes.

“Yup. That’s what Gabriel told me to do, after all. You can’t just ignore an order given to you by an archangel, you know.” Cas yawned again, running a hand through his own, somewhat scraggly hair, wincing as his fingers encountered painful knots and tangles.

Holly punched him playfully on the shoulder. “Come on, then. Mark and Groanin are already making breakfast, and I just passed Nimrod on the stairs, so up and at ‘em, best bud!” Holly dragged Cas down the staircase and to the dining room, where Nimrod was already seated, waiting for them.

“Mark says that they’re almost done in the kitchen. And he’ll be quite pleased to see that you’ve decided to wear your hijab, Holly.” he said, smiling and puffing away at a cigar, as he usually was. Holly and Cas, being djinn, didn’t mind the smoke the cigar generated; indeed, they were grateful for it, the weather outside being quite unusually cold, even for London. Nimrod smiled as he watched the two young djinn inhale some of the smoke. “I don’t know if I ever told you this, but smoking is actually good for djinn. It’s terribly bad for mundanes, of course, but we’re finally beginning to get the point across that they can’t do everything we can.” Nimrod blew a smoke ring that was, unusually for him, actually shaped like a smoke ring. He quickly blew another, slightly smaller ring, and sent it through the middle of the first before it dissipated. Holly and Cas smiled at Nimrod’s trick, and not two seconds later, Mark and Groanin came through the kitchen door with the food. 

By now, Holly, Cas, and Mark had all become quite accustomed to the food, and very much preferred it over the high-preservative American food they had been eating for the past years, though admittedly, Holly still felt nostalgic every time Mark cooked a traditional Afghani dish. They finished off the meal fairly quickly, which was saying something, as Mark and Groanin had cooked quite a lot of breakfast.

Nimrod sat back in his seat and lit another cigar. “Well,” he began amiably, as though he were about to announce some great treat for them all. “I have some news for you all. We’re headed to Egypt tonight.”

Cas, who had just taken a sip of orange juice, nearly spit it out in surprise, but restrained himself when Holly gave him a cold stare.

“Don’t you dare.” she said, making each word sound deadly, and Cas eventually was able to force himself to swallow the orange juice. Satisfied that her best friend was no longer about to spray his orange juice all over her, Holly turned back to Nimrod primly. “Where in Egypt are we going?” she asked, very politely.

Nimrod, who seemed not to notice Cas’s predicament, answered with a question. “Do you know who Ptolemy is, Holly?” He asked, smiling. Slowly, Holly nodded. “Then you ought to know where we’re headed.” Holly and Cas processed this for a moment, before Cas finally came up with the answer.

“Alexandria?! Awesome!” He shouted. This shout earned him a disapproving glance from Mark, who otherwise said nothing. Holly suspected that Mark had known of this plan all along, and had not told either Holly or Cas anything. Holly had to admit, Mark could be a pretty good actor when he put his mind to it.

“You have the whole day ahead of you to pack,” Nimrod told them. “The plane leaves at 9:30 this evening.” Cas leapt up from the table.

“All right!” he said, putting on a great show of enthusiasm, and dashed away upstairs to begin. Those left at the table winced in unison when they heard the heavy thud of Cas tripping on the stairs, likely over his own feet in his excitement and sleep-deprivation. Holly, by contrast, was somewhat more suspicious of Nimrod’s motives for taking them to Alexandria. It had to do with her vision from the previous night. Somehow, she felt that Mr. Peters’ dilemma had something to do with the man who had founded Alexandria over two thousand years before.

“Why are we going to Alexandria?” she asked. Nimrod tried to look innocent.

“Oh, no reason in particular. You and Cas just seemed to take so well to Egypt the last time that we were there, that I thought I’d show you two an even more fascinating and wonderful city than Cairo.” Nimrod told his daughter evasively. She immediately was able to tell that this was not the truth. At least, not the whole truth. 

“That’s great,” she said airily. “I guess. I just thought that it  _ might _ have something to do with Azazel. Guess I was wrong.” Holly stood up, gathered her dishes, and took them into the kitchen, leaving Nimrod and Mark behind to talk without her there to listen, and trying her best to pretend she wasn’t a seething pot of irritation at being treated like a child.

* * *

 


End file.
